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Bringing Back Resilience: Toolkit Empowers Communities to Protect Their Environments

They are called dehesa in Spanish, ahupua’a in Hawaiian, and satoyama in Japanese, and now Bioversity International and its partners are proposing a new, less poetic, but more internationally sounding, name: Socio-Ecological Production Landscapes and Seascapes (SELPS).

Still confused? We’re talking about the kinds of landscapes in which
people and nature coexist in mutually beneficial harmony.

Throughout
history, local communities have gained from the landscapes they inhabit,
benefitting from services such as clean water, rich soil, and abundant
wildlife. In many cases, the diverse human use of such landscapes has
come to maintain or even enhance their biodiversity and the ecosystem
services they provide.

Yet, global development pressures - industrialization, urbanization,
and globalization - are threatening the resilience of these
socio-ecological production land- and seascapes. External shocks,
ranging from extreme weather events to political unrest, can bring such
systems out of balance, putting at risk the environment and people’s
livelihoods.

The toolkit presents twenty indicators that evaluate the
resilience of different aspects of ecological, agricultural, cultural,
and socio-economic systems, posing questions such as whether the
diversity of the local food system is very high, very low, or somewhere
in between.

Using the indicators as a measuring stick, communities (or other
groups of stakeholders) can evaluate current conditions across their
landscape and establish a baseline of a landscape’s resilience, which is
an important first step. Understanding current conditions subsequently
allows communities to identify and reach agreement on priority actions
for increasing resilience.

The process has proved to increase communities’ sense of ownership,
their power over their environments, and their capacity to respond to
social, economic, and environmental pressures and shocks, ultimately
helping them to re-establish resilience.

COMDEKS put the toolkit to use in a number of locations, including
the Datça-Bozburun Peninsula in Turkey, which represents one of the most
pristine lowland forest and coastal landscapes in the Mediterranean. It
is rich in flora, fauna, and wildlife. About 90% of the
peninsula is protected in various ways, under natural parks, no-fishing
zones, and special protection zones.

Yet, despite these measures, the
landscape is deteriorating and biodiversity decreasing due to increasing
tourism and a growing population.

COMDEKS carried out a series of community consultations, using the
resilience indicator toolkit to get local communities’ help to identify
threats and problems in the area.

Communities pointed out decreasing
local, traditional agricultural production of figs and mastic,
abandonment of traditional fishing and diving practices in favor of
conventional products, destruction of valuable forests, and decrease of
wildlife population.

Based on these community consultations, COMDEKS designed a series of
interventions to improve the livelihoods of local populations while
strengthening the resilience of surrounding ecosystems.

So far, COMDEKS’
activities have resulted in a number of changes - uptake of more
sustainable fishing practices, increased influence and recognition of
local fisherwomen and their traditional practices, improved practices
and increased incomes of local almond producers, promotion of
ecotourism, and revived conservation efforts - all of which have
contributed to re-establishing the balance between people and nature and
improving resilience.

Distribution and Uptake

Bioversity International has identified local communities as the main
users of the new toolkit, which will also be useful to organizers and
facilitators of resilience assessment workshops.

The toolkit has been
developed as a collaborative activity under the Satoyama Initiative,
which counts 184 members, including research institutes, universities,
local NGOs, government agencies, indigenous groups, and others, who will
facilitate the distribution the tool. There are plans to translate it
into at least Spanish and French.